The term is not scary — at last not in a visceral, skin-crawling sense. Scientists have shown that the likely 2 degrees of global warming to come this century will be extremely dangerous, but, you know, “2 degrees” is hardly a phrase from nightmares and horror films.

How about “rat explosion”?

As the climate warms, rats in New York, Philadelphia and Boston are breeding faster — and experts warn of a population explosion.

But it’s not just rats, think locusts and marauding urchins!

Rats are just the beginning. Biologists have calculated that with the expected warming this century of 2 degrees Celsius, populations of dangerous crop-eating insects are likely to explode as temperate areas warm, reducing crop yields by 25 to 50 percent. Similar horrors lurk offshore, where biologists have found that a population explosion of purple sea urchins — “cockroaches of the ocean” — is choking out other denizens of Pacific kelp forests.

Forget rodents, we are being over by pop-psychologists:

The worst thing about ignorant, uninformed waffle is that the people doing it are Professors of Psych:

In recent years, psychologists have accused conservatives of being more innately fearful than liberals, but that never quite squared with the fact that conservatives express less fear over environmental problems.

There’s a difference between fear of real things, and fear of fake ones. Anyone who studies conservatives knows that they are afraid of losing jobs, quality of life, and the building blocks of a fragile, brilliant civilization. Anyone who studies the modern incarnation of “progressives” knows they worry about forests that are greening, crops that are increasing, and whether we have got the labels right on toilet doors.

Naturally, we all can’t wait to go back to a time when CO2 levels were perfect and rat plagues never happened.

Rats? Rats! In our retirement complex, we’ve been advised NOT to set out rat poison if we happen to see a rat. The OWLS resident in the area eat them, and might be poisoned themselves. So, if there is a rat problem, just encourage owls or similar birds. Problem solved – naturally!

Rats I know not much.
Mice will collect the poison pellets and sometimes store them where horses can find the stash.
Very rare thing, but not good.
Of course there are not many horses in urban sites, but where we live there are horses.
We use traps, and cats, to take care of mice, and owls are around — sometimes taking a cat.
We’ve got Coyotes, but fewer now that Mountain Lions have increased.

I’ve seen some pretty good large bucket traps for rats….rotating drink cans threaded axially onto a rod/stick over a large tub with water in it….suspend some food suspended above centre of bucket, rat tries to get to food, can rotates, rat goes for a swim, but sheer sides of the bucket mean damp rat , no escapee…..very effective. Then up to you how you dispose of the rats.

Simple effective trap. 5 gal bucket half full of water. Float a layer of sunflower seeds with shell on the surface. Provide a ramp up to the bucket rim. Be sure to scoop out dead rats/mice daily and replace sunflower seeds as needed. Oh, and put it somewhere where your wife won’t hear the critters struggling to get out – just saying.

I bet there has been nothing to define what A Plague of Rats actually is?
So just what constitutes such a plague? Seeing more than one per day?

I cannot see how a 0.7% increase in ambient temperature can cause the populations of common pests to plague proportions. Where are the food supplies for these pests to suddenly increase their populations to plague proportions to come from?

Nature has a couple of cute laws: the population of any species of animal is driven by two factors: congenial conditions (survivability) and, most especially, food supply.
An animal’s population can only `explode’ in the complete absence of predation,in which case, the explosion is followed by a collapse or crash.
In other words: Populations of predators move in step with populations of prey.

Are they now trying to tell us that increases in CO2 increase pests’ food by such a degree? Human food is so close to that which rats require, that wherever humans can and do live, there you find rats and cockroaches in quanitity. So a small increase in temperature from increases in CO2 will be good for human food too. Very good. I’m pleased by that.

As Jo has pointed out, the idiots have discovered the geometric population laws first expounded by Malthus but have also chosen to ignore the Malthusian limits, which makes them idiots. If adequate food is not there the populations don’t expand. Given the number of Hottest years evah why haven’t their populations exploded yet? They know nothing about population dynamics and rates of growth.

It seems we are more in danger from ever increasing hordes of ignorant, ill-informed, miseducated, stupid, mentally retarded Psychologists and English-Lit Majors.
We just might have to consider how we can control their population. For a start we’ll have to keep them separate so they don’t interbreed, if that’s even possible.

Mice eat grain. They don’t need it harvested, they’re very efficient at doing that themselves.

I bet the cats grew fat and gave up hunting the mice. For a while. I mean, why bother hunting them when you could just reach out and hook one as it went past? Mice are one of the few animals which breed so fast to be able to do that.

I’ve seen video of one, it might have been the same one you’ve mentioned.

I bet the mouse population suddenly crashed, and there wasn’t a mouse to be found anywhere…

It still goes on even as late as mid 2018….
My elderly mother living on the Mid North Coast NSW had a plague of mice move into the farm house
The “brazen” little rodents chewed holes through some ageing door screens and under the door..
The little darlings were so daring, they would even venture into the bedroom while you were reading in bed.!
Any food items left out on kitchen benches were “fair game”..
Mum had to stop leaving bread out for breakfast toast.. after finding they just chew through the plastic bags..
They “polished off” rat sack like it was Xmas pudding !
I finally had to get serious when nothing was working to get rid of them..Professional baits won out in the end !
The plague was caused by the long dry drought conditions, and the mice finding a easier food supply, and warm motors in frigs and cupboards to nest, and rear more offspring !
Country Living! …maybe some “professionals” need to spend more time “in the field” and get their heads out of computer models.!

Oh aye, this article does nothing for me … about plagues of rats n mice n men…. who said that again? Any way , what does “bug” me – it’s those Psychos (?) – the professors of psychology experimenting, or what then, with the Nation. Issuing all those dumb pronouncements about doom, etc. .. and how the Media laps it up – but not content with that, it’s surely all the froth n lather that WE as bloggers / commenters generate in the discussion of it.
So what’s the cure?

Dunno which is worse, the ratchet or the owl bullets all over the Barn floor – but the white calcium runny deposit over vehicle w/screens and door handles is about as good as the deposit on the paint…
All those foll deprived of water…. we wash Solar panels daily to remove desert dust, and by-products of rats, …. one uses a heck ova lotov water that. better to use the poison.
Better still is better crop storage hygiene.

As we all know in this erudite and sagacious space, it’s all about the Club of Rome and those pesky Malthusian types. I mean the modern standard bearers like Ehrlich have been right all along. Too many humans- not the Rats that are the problem; according to these crypto movers and shakers.

“Every year, Australians face down cyclones and bushfires, but should tsunamis be given more consideration?

The Northern Territory hosts some of Australia’s most beautiful coastline, but just north of its placid waters, infested by crocodiles and deadly jellyfish, lies another potential danger — fault lines that could cause devastating tsunamis.

Earthquakes generated at these fault lines have resulted in some of the worst natural disasters in history, and experts believe the NT is not free from the danger.

Curious Darwin is our story series where you ask us the questions, vote for your favourite, and we investigate. You can submit your questions on any topic at all, or vote on our next investigation.

Questioner Jenny Rahman says the most recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in September brought memories flooding back of the time she was rocked by an earthquake while visiting family on Lombok in 2002.

“It was like a train roaring through, it was so loud, we just ran,” she said.

Back then, the potential effects of tsunamis were lesser known, and there were hardly any tsunami warning systems in place, apart from in the Pacific.”
……………
“Tsunamis will hit NT again: BOM

“The NT has a low-to-moderate risk of being hit by a tsunami.
But the low-lying nature of most coastal Top End communities means even a deceptively small wave could cause damage.

Experts believe the most direct and dangerous threat to NT is from fault lines near Timor-Leste.

The north-west Top End from Wadeye through to the Tiwi Islands and around the Coburg Peninsula are believed to be most at threat.

But thankfully, due to the long, wide continental shelf between the Top End and the fault lines to the north, tsunami waves would reduce in speed and take some time to travel across the water.

Tsunami waves travel at the speed of a jumbo jet in the deep ocean, but slow right down to bicycle speed as they move into shallow water.”

I’ve heard of some strange names of bands over the years, including one named Blink-182 that apparently takes some pride in a song named, wait for it, “Enema of the State,” and Exploding White Mice sounds rather better than that extreme.

Before the day is over I’ll probably be made to egret bringing up exploding rats.

One thing is sure however, there defiitely is no way to account for some people’s taste in music.

I recall seeing them billed at a pub in Richmond in Melbourne in the early 1980s. Pity I never saw them.

I do recall really good uni bands like the Hunters and Collectors, The Oils, The Enormous Horns, Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, comedy like Fast Forward, the Big Gig, Lost Trios Ringbarkus, Flacco etc.

I went to see Paul Kelly at the Palais in Newcastle in the ’80s.
But it was the OTHER band that was totally awesome – guy played “Devil Went Down to Georgia” on a guitar, and you’d swear he was playing a violin!

Griffith Duncan Theatre, Newcastle University, Wednesday night 18th September 1974. Invited by a close friend I knew from our cricket club who was in his last year of Uni.

Went and saw an obscure Victorian band on one of their first ventures outside of their home State.

Skyhooks.

A month later, they released their smash album ‘Livin In The 70′s.’

Great gig too. Loud! Remember it because it was odd to have a midweek concert at such an obscure venue. No one (I knew) in Newcastle had heard of them.

Saw Renee Geyer at the same venue, as well as at her home venue, the 16 Footers Club on Lake Macquarie, with her original backing band Baxter Funt.

Around the same time, and a little before, I used to also frequent the Savoy, a restructured old movie hall in New Lambton, made into a ‘disco’ of sorts, and the home band there, played every second Saturday night was the original Sherbet, when Clive Shakespeare played his beautiful lead guitar work.

Newcastle got some great gigs in those days too, as a lot of big bands (Internationals too) toured there, mainly playing at the Newcastle City Hall.

That song was so silly that you couldn’t help but relax and enjoy the sheer stupidity of it.

You couldn’t play it today though, with so many living in the twilight zone.

There would quickly be a movement set up to save the “one eyed one horned flying Purple People Eater” from discrimination and to set up crowd funding to help them to have the horns removed and get another eye.

No doubt 97% of the activists would have had a friend who had actually seen one while going home in the dark after a great party.

I believe the people pushing the climate agenda continuously project their true behaviour onto those they wish to control, talking about rats, plagues and parasites is revealing but its difficult to find an association for idiot savant.

[...] price of power is not scary enough be warned about the impending plague of rats and other horrors flagged by Jo Nova. Share this:TwitterFacebookGoogleRedditLinkedIn This entry was posted in Rafe, Terrorism. [...]

I have already experienced such a plague. Back in the early 1990′s, I lived east of Lancaster, CA in the Mojave Desert. There had been a several year drought (a drought in the desert – oh my oh my). It had lasted long enough for the predators such as coyotes, owls, hawks, and the like to be reduced to a minimum. There were just a few human families, my cat, and tens of thousands of acres of tumble weeds, mustard, fully seeded desert grass, onions, alfalfa, and carrots. The onions, alfalfa, and carrots were irrigated but the spring had been very wet causing a massive overgrowth of weeds and grass in the unused fields. It was very ripe for a plague of rats and mice.

My cat would leave me the choice parts of numerous rats such as noses, tails, livers, and feet each morning. The rat population had grown so fast, they had eaten the supply of food in the fields. In massive numbers, they crossed crossed the roads. They were so thick, you could not avoid hitting them. Especially, the ones who were eating the more than adequate road kill. A distinct smell of rodents along with the smell of rotting flesh filled the air. The next year, the predators returned. The rat population plummeted and rabbits started to repopulate the land.

It happened repeatedly on a three to six year cycle. Overgrowth of weeds. Population boom of rats and mice. Rapid increase in the smaller predators. Population growth of rabbits. Then rapid increase in coyotes. Followed by a drought and an almost complete die off of predators and prey. Global warming and man caused climate change had nothing to do with it. It was just the way things were in the Antelope Valley region of the Mojave Desert.

3 Nov: UK Times (Irish): We need more heretics to question the new religion on tackling climate change
by Cormac Lucey
How should a sensible conservative view climate change? I have several concerns: the air of hysteria used to promote it as a cause; the science behind it; the remedies that are proposed to stem it; and the cost of those remedies.

First, I am somewhat sceptical about the ideology of climate change, the phenomenon formerly known as global warming. I am wary of many who advance that cause. There is something pre-industrial in the desires and objectives of environmentalists who use apocalyptic warnings to spur us to adopt the changes they desire. In March 2009, Prince Charles warned that the world had only 100 months “before we risk catastrophic climate change”. That was 116 months ago.

I can find only one word to describe the recent claim by the United Nations’ intergovernmental panel for climate change (IPCC) that to avert complete climate catastrophe, with wars, famine and disease spreading across the globe, what is now required is nothing less than “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. That word is totalitarian. It’s not that these people are undemocratic or authoritarian. It’s that they we insist we reorder the totality of our lives to fulfil their plan.

My second concern is that I am unsure about the science behind climate change…

“In March 2009, Prince Charles warned that the world had only 100 months “before we risk catastrophic climate change”. That was 116 months ago.”

It’s not hard to find one James Hansen (yes, that one!) predicting projecting that sea levels would be lapping at the door of NASA GISS in “30 years” if we don’t do anything.
We didn’t do very much, nowhere near enough they say – and of course, it’s worse than we thought.
That building – the famous diner in “Seinfeld” – is still nice and dry, no floods there.
Back then, we had 10 years to “do something”.
In 1998 we had 10 years, “or else”.
In 2008 we had 10 years, “or else”.
IPCC 1AR said 0.3C/decade next 2 decades.
IPCC 2AR said 0.2C/decade next 2 decades.
IPCC 3AR said 0.15C/decade next 2 decades.
Each one lower than the previous.
Yet oddly, all “worse than we thought”.

Sure – emissions higher than projected, temps lower than expected, projections of the next two decades dropping at every review, obviously things must be “worse than we thought”.

CarbonBrief re Financial Times’ article: How to power India: Modi tweaks the energy mix
India’s government needs to weigh consumer aspirations against fears of pollution as the country grapples with a surge in oil demand and an investment boom, writes Anjli Raval in a Financial Times “big read”. “According to government figures, more than 230m vehicles clog up India’s roads, up threefold since 2001, but it is still an under-developed market,” Raval notes, with the number of fuel stations having risen 40% in six years.
“The rapid growth in India is set to support the global energy industry at a time demand growth for oil elsewhere is slowing,” the feature says, with a chart from the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggesting China will overtake the US as the number one user of oil before 2035 – with India not far behind.
“Yet India is also battling air pollution and collaborating on international emissions policies, given its vulnerability to climate-related stress,” Raval notes. “In a country where fossil fuels account for 90 per cent of its energy mix, its choices have an impact on the environment as well as global energy markets.” The feature covers coal use as well as oil, quoting the IEA’s head of demand outlook Laura Cozzi saying: “Solar is as cheap as coal in certain areas, but the challenge is to keep up with demand and to do it cheaply”.

4 Nov: Daily Mail editorial: The Mail on Sunday comment: There’s only one way to stamp out the BBC’s blatant bias
Under its Charter and Agreement, which require it to be impartial on matters of major controversy, it receives the licence money collected for it by the State under the threat of prosecution.
How can the State justify this, and why should TV owners be prepared to put up with it, if the money is used to promote any particular interest or cause?
On many issues – from man-made global warming to drug legalisation – the BBC makes no attempt to be or even look impartial.

Yet the Corporation is also a valuable and irreplaceable institution…
The Corporation’s system for dealing with complaints is a disgrace.
Initial queries do not even go directly to the BBC but are handled by service company Capita.
The few which make it past Capita’s time-wasting battle screens are brushed aside by an Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) which seldom accepts that anything is wrong.

5 Nov: BBC: Ten simple changes to help save the planet
We know that climate change is happening – but there are plenty of things individuals can do to help mitigate it. Here’s your handy guide to the most effective strategies.
By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
It’s settled science that climate change is real, and we’re starting to see some of the ways that it affects us. It increases the likelihood of flooding in Miami and elsewhere, threatens the millions of people living along the Brahmaputra River in north-eastern India and disrupts the sex life of plants and animals…

So we don’t need to ask whether climate change is happening – or whether humans are causing it. Instead, we need to ask: “what can we do?”…
Here’s our guide.

1. What is the single most important thing humanity has to do in the coming years – and what does that mean for me?
The number one goal? Limiting the use of fossil fuels such as oil, carbon and natural gas and replacing them with renewable and cleaner sources of energy, all while increasing energy efficiency…

One good example of the importance of this regards refrigerants. An advocacy group of researchers, business-people and NGOs called Drawdown found that getting rid of HFCs (chemicals used in fridges and air conditioning) was the number-one most effective policy to reduce emissions. That’s because they are up to 9,000 more warming for the atmosphere than CO2. The good news is that we have made global progress on this, and two years ago 170 countries agreed to start phasing out HFCs in 2019…http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181102-what-can-i-do-about-climate-change

3 Nov: NYT: More Evidence Points to China as Source of Ozone-Depleting Gas
By Chris Buckley; Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York.
BEIJING — An environmental group says it has new evidence showing that China is behind the resurgence of a banned industrial gas that not only destroys the planet’s protective ozone layer but also contributes to global warming.
The gas, trichlorofluoromethane, or CFC-11, is supposed to be phased out worldwide under the Montreal Protocol, the global agreement to protect the ozone layer. In May, however, scientists published research showing that CFC-11 levels in the atmosphere had begun falling more slowly. Their findings suggested significant new emissions of the gas, most likely from East Asia.

Evidence then uncovered by The New York Times and the Environmental Investigation Agency pointed to rogue factories in China as a likely major source.
Now, the E.I.A. has prepared a report that it says bolsters the finding that Chinese factories are behind the return of CFC-11…
It plans to submit the work this week in Quito, Ecuador, where delegates from nearly 200 countries are attending a Montreal Protocol meeting on the status of efforts to repair the ozone layer…

Chinese officials have said they have already acted vigorously to close rogue chemical makers. They have also asserted that the CFC-11 emissions in question are too large to be solely from those operations…
“When it comes to definitive answers, I think we have to first emphasize that this mystery has yet to be solved,” said Keith Weller, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, which helps organize the ozone layer talks.
The CFC-11 mystery has wide implications. The ozone layer has been healing, but the return of a banned substance is an alarming breach in one of the world’s most effective environmental pacts and could slow the layer’s recovery…

A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Liu Youbin, told a news conference on Wednesday that inspectors had checked 1,172 businesses over recent months and found evidence of CFC-11 in only 10.
“If it was just those small, illegal roaming producers, the volume could not be that much,” Chen Liang, an official with the ministry who oversees international cooperation, including in ozone layer policy, said in an interview.

Mr. Weller also said the estimated new emissions of CFC-11, in the order of roughly 13,000 metric tons per year, appeared to be too great to come from illegal production alone.
Yet Mr. Chen also said there were daunting barriers to regulating China’s vast numbers of chemical and foam-making businesses. By his count, there were about 3,000 businesses in the foam sector. But the numbers of scattered, under-the-radar plants could be much higher…https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/climate/china-ozone-cfcs.html

“More Evidence Points to China as Source of Ozone-Depleting Gas” there isnt any ozone depleting gas that was the other scam.
This is just another scare ploy.
“BEIJING — An environmental group says it has new evidence showing that China is behind the resurgence of a banned industrial gas that not only destroys the planet’s protective ozone layer but also contributes to global warming.”
TOTAL BS! What group, who? any credentials, there never are, just some anonymous group.

I don’t know about urban rat plagues, but there have always been mouse plagues in the grain belt, averaging one every 4 years if conditions are favourable.

When you get a good grain crop followed by a mild winter that doesn’t substantially reduce the existing mouse population you can end up with a subsequent plague. Cold winters kill; wet weather floods burrows to both kill and stop breeding. Minimum and zero-till cropping regimes used these days to protect the soil structure and stop erosion also allow mouse burrows to stay intact between crops, rather than being ploughed into oblivion like in the old days. While there is fallen grain on the ground the mice will continue breeding like mice, until they run out of food, then they start cannibalising each other and their numbers crash.

Then there are the plague locusts that infest the drier areas of the continent including the grain areas. If left uncontrolled they will eat anything green — even green lead-based house paint on at least one occasion that ended their migration prematurely. They can produce several generations in a year and appear whenever weather and soil conditions are favourable to breeding, egg-laying and hatching. Warm, moist weather suits egg-laying, so if Australia gets hot and dry we should have less locusts, not more. Conversely, wetter years tend to be big locust years, good for breeding and with lots to eat.

Plagues of mice and locusts have always followed the weather for blindingly obvious reasons, while urban rats do well when garbage disposal and sanitation are badly run and filth is endemic. Nowt to do with global warming.

The sea urchin plague off Tassie a few years back was found to be caused by over-fishing the lobsters that just love a feed of urchin. Global warming was getting the blame there for kelp destruction and the urchin explosion too. Once some lobsters were re-introduced, the problem resolved itself. Magic. No more global warming.

Rats need 2 things, like every other animal needs, to survive – food and nesting sites.

Hot or cold, as long as there is abundant food and places to nest, there will be rats. There will be life, in general, really.

Rats, mice, all other animals, birds, insects (and humans) – only get out of control when there is too much food and too few predators – in urban areas, that’s around restaurants, apartment complexes, abandoned and neglected areas where trash is dumped.

Coyotes have learned to live in cities because there are plenty of rats and mice, and garbage, to eat.

The best way to solve an urban rat plague is to prevent littering and dumping. Reduce the food available. Don’t leave abandoned and empty buildings, rodent and pest breeding havens, standing until they become a hazard or fall over on their own – take them down. You get rid of an eyesore and a breeding ground in one go.

Cyclic problems solve themselves, generally, but can be helped along with various traps, poisons, predators.

But saying “Clean up your mess, the rats like it” doesn’t make a horror-filled headline.

2 Nov: Reuters: Kosovo opts for coal plant despite criticism
by Fatos Bytyci; additional reporting by Maja Zuvela in Sarajevo
PRISTINA – After decades of relying on lignite, Kosovo has been told it needs to phase the energy source out, despite having 14 billion tonnes of reserves, the fifth largest in the world…
“The World Bank has recommended to us to have a 400 MW solar park, a 170 MW wind park and a 350 MW battery storage park,” Valdrin Lluka, Kosovo’s Minister for Economic Development, said.
“We don’t have that luxury to do such experiments in a poor country such as Kosovo. It is a major risk. It is in our national security interest to secure base energy inside our territory,” he told Reuters.

2 Nov: Reuters: Both Russian and U.S. gas are in Germany’s future energy mix: official

5 Nov: South African: South Africa’s complicated coal conundrum
At a time when South Africa’s unemployment rate continues to rise, job creation is more important to the majority than the issue of climate change
by Luke Daniel
South Africa is blessed with an abundance of coal. The fossil fuel which is harvested from deep beneath the ground accounts for 77% of the country’s electrical output. Mining operations tasked with bringing coal to the surface employ hundreds of thousands of South Africans.
Yet, while coal has historically been the nation’s backbone of power, global trends against ‘dirty energy’ are threatening to tear South Africa’s already divided society further apart…

Despite, reluctantly, joining the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and promising to abide by regulations set by the Group of 20 (G20) summits, South Africa has come under international fire for its destructive reliance on coal…

Coal-fired power stations facing fierce opposition
Globally, financial institutions, human rights groups and environmentalists are beginning to fight back against coal-fired power plants.
Recently, Standard Chartered Bank announced that it would stop financing the construction of coal-fired power plants, anywhere in the world, in line with recommendations tabled by the Paris Agreement on climate change…
Locally, Standard Bank has also threatened to cut funding for coal-fired power plants…

Times Live recently reported on a statement issued by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which hit back at environmental groups pushing for renewable energy, saying:
“NUM in Highveld has noted with utter disgust a reckless statement made by Greenpeace Africa. “The reckless and impetuous statement is a clear campaign by Greenpeace Africa that the government should close power stations and coal mines in Mpumalanga.”…
“If the power stations and coal mines are closed in Mpumalanga several towns including Witbank will become ghost towns. If the power stations and mines are shut down‚ the economy of our country will collapse and the people will be left in darkness.”…

5 Nov: AFR: Tata Steel comes shopping for coal security
by Matthew Stevens
Having failed very recently to acquire the security blanket of Australian metallurgical coal mines, global steel giant Tata Steel is promoting the need for a forum with Australian governments and miners to more productively align the central Queensland coal system with India’s surging raw materials needs.
An executive delegation from Tata, led by relatively new chief executive TV Narendran, landed in Brisbane on Monday with proposals that aim to take its relationship with Australian suppliers to a new level, moving it from its currently transactional standing to something more symbiotic…

India will be the world’s biggest metcoal importer by 2020 and it is already the single biggest destination for Australian exports, taking 25 per cent of shipments last year. Just to refresh there, metcoal has very particular characteristics that make it – so far at least – an irreplaceable part of the steelmaking process. And in 2017 Australia earned $38 billion in shipping 179 million tonnes of metcoal to the steelmaking world…

In September Australia’s official forecaster, the Office of the Chief Economist, reported that shipments to India in the first half of this year had grown by 26 per cent year-on-year to 28 million tonnes. That implies annual shipments of 56mt. But the OCE has forecast that shipments will hit 75mtpa by 2020. So this really is a relationship that matters to Australia and its coal miners.
The reason for that growth is that Indian steel production rose 8.8 per cent through the half, ahead of expectations for annual growth, which range above 7 per cent…

The Financial Review has been told that Tata will identify growing ship queues outside of North Queensland’s coal ports as another litmus of inefficiency and a pointer to Australia’s sub-optimal cost control…

Informatively, as Team Tata was making its way around Brisbane, Japan Inc offered reinforcement of the idea that metcoal is a market under real supply-side pressure…
Itochu, which is already a partner in Australian mines run by Glencore and Whitehaven, is gambling on early-stage investment to refresh, extend and geographically broaden its metcoal supply lines at the back end of a period in which incumbent operators have been relatively content to contain risk capital investment and enjoy the harvest time.https://www.afr.com/business/tata-steel-comes-shopping-for-coal-security-20181105-h17j12

5 Nov: Buzzfeed: If You’re So Miserable About Climate Change You Don’t Want Kids, You’re Not Alone
This is a really important movement for a growing population of people who are emotionally affected by climate change.
by Elfy Scott
(Elfy Scott is a Sydney-based freelance writer, journalist, and model. As a writer, Elfy’s work has featured in publications such as The Saturday Paper, Vice, GQ, Catalogue, Sneaky, and Buzzworthy. Elfy has also completed an online editorial internship for GQ Australia…Elfy holds a Bachelor of Psychological Sciences from the University of New South Wales and is currently completing a Master of Advanced Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney – elfyscott.com)

A new branch of psychology known as ecopsychology is emerging to help those who are dealing with feelings of grief, despair and hopelessness as a result of global warming.

Tiyan Baker is a 29-year-old artist and documentarian who researches climate change extensively for her practice, and is well versed in the global ecopsychology community.
Baker told BuzzFeed News that she first became heavily involved in researching climate change after living in China, and has experienced a deterioration of her mental wellbeing as a result of self-education around global warming…

Baker says she feels particularly sad about how climate change will affect the developing world.
“We’re going to see mass death and mass migration – and there’s a climate justice issue here because [developing nations] haven’t caused a lot of the situation that we’re in.”…

She says one Facebook group she is involved in is made up of “very grim baby boomers”.
“They believe in human extinction, they believe that it’s inevitable and it’s in the near-term, and they’re kind of people that are wrapping up their lives emotionally,” she said. “People go on there and they’re like ‘I’m getting a vasectomy next week’, there’s a lot of grief.”

The term ecopsychology is attributed to a book written by Californian academic Theodore Roszak published in the 1990s, which proposed a new discipline of psychotherapy that sought to understand the “ecological unconscious” in each person…

4 Nov: Guardian editorial: The Guardian view on environmental activism: new energy is welcome
Protesters promising a new wave of civil disobedience linked to the extinction crisis are right to be infuriated by government inaction.
In advance of his latest wildlife television series, Dynasties, David Attenborough said at the weekend that too many warnings about endangered species are a “real turn-off”. A few days earlier, the activist group Extinction Rebellion launched a campaign of civil disobedience by demanding a zero-carbon economy by 2025. Writing in advance of a protest in London that saw 15 people arrested, Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said she and others have been driven to break the law after spending years ringing alarm bells and being ignored.

Influenced by thinkers including Charles Eisenstein and Erica Chenoweth, whose ideas about peaceful protest have also been taken up by opponents of President Trump, and with a commitment to grassroots organising that is similar to 350.org (the anti-fossil-fuel organisation launched in the US by Bill McKibben in 2007), Extinction Rebellion aims to foment a mass movement that will change history. Elected politicians, goes the argument, have failed, as have businesses and other organisations including environmental charities. Carbon emissions and biodiversity loss are out of control. The “unimaginable horrors” of unchecked warming and habitat destruction mean more radical tactics are called for – and morally justified by the dangers, in the eyes of protesters…

The heightened language of emergency and breakdown employed by this new grouping will not appeal to everyone. Nor is it intended to. It is rational to be sceptical about whether the protesters will achieve their aims. But on the basis of the most recent warnings about rising temperatures and species decline, and chancellor Philip Hammond’s failure to mention climate change at all in last week’s budget, it is not rational to deny that they are justified in rebelling against the government’s inaction. Their sense of urgency is welcome.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/04/the-guardian-view-on-environmental-activism-new-energy-is-welcome

This type of nonsense can only breed in the closed confines of the smartphone enabled fool-asphere called social media.

It becomes a self sustaining echo chamber but based on nothing excepts recycled stupidity.

It struck me the other day, people “exist” on line, but like the movie “Player One”, only live to get online. I’m very much an off-line person , have no social media presence at all, and do miss out on some stuff as people send “invites” via places like Faceplant seem to monopolize peoples whole lives.
Oh well, too bad. So while people are living in virtual reality, I’m actually doing real and useful stuff. As a society, its like living in a social media day dream….until rudely shaken by reality thats snuck up on them….

Speaking of rats, we are about to have an election in the States.
Perhaps you missed it.
About half of us will vote, to send people to our various capitals to govern us.
The reason we haven’t been openly visited by advanced civilizations is that they listen via
media to the statements of those who would govern us, and decide that a mental asylum is not a good vacation spot.
I am in one of those states where one party swears that, if elected, they will commit us to 100% renewables.
I went to the website of this future chief energy engineer, expecting, of course, to find an engineering degree and
a long list of technical accomplishments.
I was disappointed.
I shouldn’t have been.
I once thought insurance was a group of people banding together, each paying a little to provide for a rare but expected burden that
will happen to some, not all.
Silly me,
Insurance, according to this web site, is where, if you have a large expense, you pay a little to this business which immediately takes care of the expense for you.

I thought “rights” were natural rights, like life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And civil rights, like protection of private property or equal treatment under the law.

I guess I was wrong. Health care seems to be a “right”. College seems to be a “right”. A good job seems to be a “right”.

Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here.

Leave this sorry planet to the rat plague.

Or maybe it would be easier to beam up a few thousand elites….the ones who always tell us how terrible things, and we, are.
I’m betting the rest of us could muddle through alright.

I live on the British Columbia West Coast in Canada. The sea urchins are just part of the food web of sub-tidal environment. They eat kelp. What eats them. Sea Otters, crabs wolf eels and other opportunists.
In a dynamic ecology such as there is out here, there are ebbs and flows within the total food web. When the urchins are up, the kelp is down. When the urchins are up, the predators are up. This varies seasonally, yearly and in relation to diseases and a whole raft of other ecological factors.
They are harvested commercially. In my territory, when there is commercial harvesting there is a huge bloom of kelp growth.
Regional and local tidal conditions affect distribution. Salinity varies due to fresh water river discharge.
So many factors that flippant use of the “climate change” meme can be dismissed out of hand. Though, if it comes from Bloomberg, Mikey is a known Climate Change (SNIPPED) CTS

Eating rat meat is considered a delicacy in Togo!
This could be excellent news. Rat meat Togolese restaurants could open up across the world.
No more of that terrible gas polluting farming of sheep and cattle and their horrible flatulent habits.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves for making fun of what Flam is forecasting! She knows of what she speaks. After all, she has a B.Sc. in geophysics and has written a book on the role of sex in the evolution of humans. /sarc

For interventionist ecologists there is no time to wait. No time to learn. No time to assess and look at benefits and there cannot be any benefit from a slight increase in average temperature. Act now. We have just discovered something and it needs an immediate lethal response. The unethical and imaginary Precautionary Principle.

Besides, you get funding. Lots of funding. Consider also $444Million, 7 tons of gold given without request for nothing in particular but allegedly to save something which does not need saving in a way not yet specified for a problem which in the long term may not exist.

in 2000, According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall seeing a Caribou in Australia will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow a Caribou is,” he said.

Maybe the “big Apple” wouldn’t have the potential rat population explosion problem if they’d stop leaving tons of rubbish on the streets in garbage bags and actually had a civilised society solution of enclosed bins and regular removal.

Parts of New York only need residents to start throwing bed chamber contents out the windows to resemble towns of the dark ages.

Also rats are endemic. I have read that in a major city you are never than 40′ or 12 metres from a rat. The population must be immense. Smart and hardy and omnivorous, they are hard to remove. You can only reduce populations, like mosquitoes. Populations can and do explode to match supply. As CO2 has increased 50%, photosynthesis will increase 50% and we will have a lot more to eat. World record crops, the opposite of the silly predictions, are feeding exploding populations of humans too.

So what’s the problem? Rats, cats, dogs, birds, insects, cows, camels, kangaroos, insects. Is there no species on earth which is not our enemy? It all depends on your point of view. In India the ancient Jain believers often wear face masks in case they accidentally swallow a living insect.

To Western eyes, the most amusing religion in India were the people on the street dressed all in white. They are the agnostics. Great religion. Makes sense. Believing in not believing in anything. They also worship peace.

I live between a Lake and the Ocean with a major shopping centre not too far away. Every night my now deceased German Shepherd went on boundary patrol, as they do roughly every half hour, and would too often bark in the most savage warning manner.

A neighbour discovered the reason, rats nose to tail heading along the top of the boundary fence twice a night in opposite directions obviously heading to the shopping centre rubbish containers. A couple of kilometres journey each way.

Can we avoid encouraging fake news by repeating the warmista’s language? It’s not a 2 degree rise this century, it’s a 1.5 to 2 degree rise above pre-industrial times.
But what was the pre-industrial average global temperature? While there are plenty of anomaly charts available, there seems to be little discussion of absolute temperatures.GISS reports the average global temperature in 2017 to be 14.9 degrees C, 0.9 degrees above the 1950-80 average, so presumably that’s at least 1 degree above pre-industrial times.
So the IPCC’s warnings of disasters, and the rat scare reported above, will occur with another 0.5 degree of global warming to an average temperature of 15.4 degrees C – how frightening is that?

And to add that the temperatures that are at sometime 19th cent. are crap, one thermometer in the SH! And that was in Indonesia, in the tropical convergence zone! meaning there were none at any latitude that is meaningful.

Business as usual.Holocene records up to 8000 years before present, from several ice cores were examined. The differences in temperatures between all records which are approximately a century apart were determined, after any trends in the data had been removed. The differences were close to normally distributed.The average standard deviation of temperature was 0.98 ± 0.27C.Lloyd PJ. Energy & Environment · Vol. 26, No. 3, 2015

I was referring to the McLean study of the HCRUT (fake) data based on thermometer readings over the past 150 years or so. NOT Ice cores.
Ice cores are just that icecores they sample the temperature at the place where they were layed down, at the polar regions.
This method:
“If we want to reconstruct past air temperatures, one of the most critical parameters is the age of the ice being analysed. Fortunately, ice cores preserve annual layers, making it simple to date the ice. Seasonal differences in the snow properties create layers – just like rings in trees. Unfortunately, annual layers become harder to see deeper in the ice core. Other ways of dating ice cores include geochemisty, layers of ash (tephra), electrical conductivity, and using numerical flow models to understand age-depth relationships.
It is possible to discern past air temperatures from ice cores. This can be related directly to concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gasses preserved in the ice. Snow precipitation over Antarctica is made mostly of H216O molecules (99.7%). There are also rarer stable isotopes: H218O (0.2%) and HD16O (0.03%) (D is Deuterium, or 2H)[9]. Isotopic concentrations are expressed in per mil δ units (δD and δ18O) with respect to Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (V-SMOW). Past precipitation can be used to reconstruct past palaeoclimatic temperatures. δD and δ18O is related to surface temperature at middle and high latitudes. The relationship is consistent and linear over Antarctica[9].”

“This week the NZX will list the country’s first ever investment fund for carbon credits. Paul Harrison is the Managing Director of Salt Funds, which is launching the Carbon Fund, he tells us how it works.”

How does it work? Like any scam sold by smiling slippery snakes, it’s money for jam! Will it help the so-called climate crisis? Crickets and tumbleweed…

Man, you’re brave venturing over to listen to the dark side. The Comrade Leader of the dark side was recently asked what she thought of POTUS DJT.
“Pass,” she pathetically stated.

To think, were NZ to have the skimpiest slither of the economic prosperity currently on display, it would be hogs heaven. And to think additionally, current new jobs in USA (4.5M) since the installation of the POTUS Trump’s administration, just about numbers the entire population of NZ.

L.D., it’s always advantageous to know what the enemy is up to. Anyway, I like to mix up my audio whilst driving – a little bFM (student radio) until it gets too raucous, maybe some Radio Hauraki for a 1970s screaming guitar solo (until the ads come on), some RadioNZ to hear what Official-Speak is being pronounced today (until an anti-plastic bag urbanite or crazy climate crook comes on, see above link to carbon fund charlatan), occasionally I’ll stumble upon an irie, reggae, rasta tune emanating out of some suburban backyard station, and I’ve even tuned in to Bach or Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky (especially when stuck in traffic – it somewhat soothes the soul).

This paper was cited in the 2006 CCSP report that you constantly misrepresent:

“Temperature trends in the lower atmosphere: Steps for understanding and reconciling differences”

If you actually read that 2006 report, then you should know why the post-1979 tropical troposphere cooling in the HadAT2 image is not real.

It’s telling that David Evans still falsely claims that HadAT2 1979 – 1999 data is all there, that the CCSP was sneakily hiding the data (even though they clearly cite the 2005 publication containing the data), etc.:

“This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place [...]. [...] The weather balloon data showing the atmospheric warming pattern was finally released in 2006, in the US Climate Change Science Program [...] This is the only data there is. [By the way], isn’t this an obscure place to release such important and pivotal data – you don’t suppose they are trying to hide something, do you?”http://archive.is/cpIkQ

You apparently didn’t take the HadAT2 team’s advice about citing and reading that paper:

If you actually read that 2006 report, then you should know why the post-1979 tropical troposphere cooling in the HadAT2 image is not real.

Have you read it? They why not share the reason? Because you don’t know it?

It’s telling that David Evans still falsely claims that HadAT2 1979 – 1999 data is all there, that the CCSP was sneakily hiding the data (even though they clearly cite the 2005 publication containing the data), etc.:

That doesn’t parse…

David is pointing out that if they were honest scientists they wouldn’t bury such a key, THE key point so deep in a long doc.

They are always so triumphant when they figure out a new trick to “find” the hotspot, but they never admit it went missing. Hmm…..

Whenever I see your name, I can always be sure it is followed by some copycat anti-science idiocy that shows you haven’t even the most basic clue what you are talking about. It is noted you were totally incapable of countering one single point that I made. Maybe you will be the AGW apologist that actually produces some empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2. Surly you can find somewhere to copy it from!

No warming for 33 out of 40 years. Only the 1998 El Nino, and a mathematical trend calculated from a now disappeared transient.
That’s all you have.

And of course reality shows that the 1940′s was similar temperature to now, making even more of a nonsense of your fake graph. !

And if we round that 0.22˚C anomaly (1/5th of a degree) it’s very close to – oops! – zero. But never fear, those caring, all-knowing scientists at The Wishy-washy Post (where Democracy Dies in Darkness or something) have discovered – again? – the mysterious missing heat is hiding in the ocean. Can only mean one thing folks – we’re doomed!

Good to see a researcher that doesnt seem to blame everything ‘globul warmung’.https://www.iceagenow.info/ice-ages-look-like-super-el-ninos/https://www.nature.com/news/1998/020708/full/news020708-19.html
“During past ice ages, the tropical Pacific Ocean behaved rather as it does today in an El Niño event, bringing downpours to some places and drought to others, say US researchers. ”
Further down they mention the dreaded greenhouse gas thing, possibly due to ‘funding’ for their research.
But they are suggesting that El Nino may be a sign of ice ages.
“It’s not global warming, it’s ocean warming, and it’s leading into the next ice age.”
I dont see El Nino causing an Ice age, maybe a sign, unknown.

I will add events like El ninos need a driving force, non provided in this. I havent yet seen any provided evidence of any driving force for El nino La Nina cycle. Maybe its solar, OH NO we forgot that!

1 Nov: LakeMacToday: Positive outlook for NSW thermal coal
Thermal coal exports to Asia over the next 20 plus years will continue to increase and maintain job security for onsite mine workers and employees in allied industries, according to independent analysts, Commodity Insights.
The NSW thermal coal sector is enjoying healthy conditions with expert independent analysis forecasting this to continue to at least 2040.
Prices are steady at around $114 a tonne compared to around $49 a tonne in January 2016 and demand has continued at near record levels through the Port of Newcastle.

Demand for NSW coal is strong, particularly from traditional Asian markets such as Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Exports of NSW thermal coal to Japan rose by 2.4% between December 2016 and December 2017 – from 62.8 to 64.3 million tonnes.
Recently the Japanese Ambassador to Australia, Mr Sumio Kusaka, told a conference in Brisbane that Japan would continue to buy coal from Australia to secure its energy needs into the future – “…Japan seeks to further strengthen cooperation with Australia to ensure the stable supply of coal moving ahead.”

According to the most recent report on Southeast Asia from the independent International Energy Agency (IEA), Southeast Asia and India will be the primary growth centre of global coal demand to 2040, with emerging economies in the region increasing their demand for thermal coal to meet their rapidly growing energy needs.

The IEA forecasts coal consumption in South East Asia will more than double by 2040 to 390 million tonnes, driven by an increase in demand for reliable and affordable electricity. Electricity demand in the region is expected to grow by 3.7% per year to 2040 and coal share in the region’s power mix is forecast to increase from around 35% today to a little over 40% over the same period.

A recent report by Commodity Insights forecasts strong demand for Australian thermal coal across existing and emerging Asian markets between now and 2030. Commodity Insights estimate Asian thermal coal demand will grow by over 400 million tonnes (Mt) from 740 million tonnes in 2017 to 1147 million tonnes in 2030. This is double Australia’s total 2017 thermal coal export volume of 200Mt and a significant opportunity for NSW thermal coal producers.https://lakemactoday.com.au/2018/11/01/positive-outlook-for-nsw-thermal-coal/

on ABC Brisbane this morning BoM spokesman called Campbell(?) and ABC presenter made much of the SE Qld heatwave. BoM man said, closely paraphrasing:

- heat kills more people around the world than any other weather system.-

can’t find the audio, but presume it was this Campbell:
5 Nov: Toowoomba Chronicle: Severe heatwave to continue in Toowoomba today
by Tobi Loftus
A SEVERE heatwave that hit Toowoomba and southern Queensland across the weekend is set to continue well into this week.
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Sam Campbell said the mercury could reach a top of 35 degrees in Toowoomba today.
“A hot air mass developed over the interior and then moved over to southern Queensland,” Mr Campbell said.
“Temperatures will be well above average for this time of year.”…

Mr Campbell said there wouldn’t be that much relief at night either.
“The main thing people will feel is the hot conditions persisting overnight,” he said.
“Overnight temperatures will be staying up as high as 21 degrees, the average for this time of year is 15 degrees.
“The warm overnight temperatures and the hot daytime temperatures will likely have an impact on the community.”
Mr Campbell said that was why BoM was labelling this as a severe heatwave…https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/be-prepared-severe-heatwave-set-to-continue-today/3567219/

6 Nov: Toowoomba Chronicle: Warning as temperatures continue to soar
by Sophie Chirgwin
QUEENSLANDERS will swelter through another day of scorching weather as extreme heatwave conditions continue until midweek, with emergency services on high alert for heat-related sicknesses.
The Bureau of Meteorology has announced southeast Queensland is sweating through “extreme” heatwave conditions, which is the rarest kind of heatwave.
BOM forecaster David Crock said today may be even hotter than Monday in some parts of the southeast interior, with Ipswich expected to climb to 40C…

Queensland Ambulance Service director of clinical quality and patient safety Tony Hucker said paramedics would be on “high alert” for vulnerable members of the community, such as the elderly, children, pets and those who are sick…
“Heat stroke is very dangerous. This is at the end point of the heat-related illness spectrum, and it’s dangerous – fundamentally, your organs start breaking down and you can die. So it’s so important not to let people get to that level of illness.”…

The QAS is urging people to look after themselves and be sensible in the hot weather so their services aren’t required.
“We’re busy, we see 3500 patients a day and once we start seeing temperatures go up we can see that workload go up by a factor of 100, in some cases even more. It’s really important people look out for themselves, avoid the hottest part of the day, stay out of the sun, wear loose-fitted clothing, keep water close by and just try and take it easy on these really hot days,” he said…
Tuesday’s hottest predicted temperatures in the southeast’s extreme heatwave are: Ipswich 40C; Gatton 39C; Beaudesert 39C; Esk 39C; Toowoomba 36C; Sunshine Coast 33C; Brisbane 33C.https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/health-alert-as-heatwave-set-to-continue-in-queens/3568455/

5 Nov: Toowoomba Chronicle: Heatwave leaves seven people in hospital
by Tobi Loftus
SEVEN people have been treated in public hospitals for heat-related conditions across the Darling Downs in the past two days…
“On Sunday and until lunchtime Monday, there were seven patients who presented with heat-related conditions at public hospital emergency departments across the Darling Downs and South Burnett,” a Darling Downs Health spokeswoman said.
“These conditions included dehydration, fainting and heat stress.”…https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/heatwave-leaves-seven-people-hospital/3568012/

Yes the heat wave alarmists are active. I have seen many of such heatwaves in November over the decades living in QLD. Some people must be too young or have only recently come from colder places. Look how Melbourne had its usual 4 seasons of late. The Cup was nearly a washout but ran in fine weather with cool days to follow. Normal every year.

Like a lot of people, I know that a lot of an iceberg can be below the surface. What’s your point?

It’s my opinion that if the Mueller “investigation” had any substantial and legitimate evidence, it would have been leaked before the mid-terms. I really do not think such a high profile, and politically charged process would be utterly devoid of people wanting to jump the gun to expose what, if anything, has been found.

At this stage its only speculation, but if impeachment proceedings go ahead then Mike Pence is heir apparent. He is a Washington man and should be able to get legislation through Congress more successfully than Donald.

You may remember he came up with the Red Team Blue Team concept, which Donald failed to implement. Sad really.

VIDEOS/PICS/CHARTS: 5 Nov: CarbonBrief: The Carbon Brief Quiz 2018
by Carbon Brief Staff
Last Wednesday, Carbon Brief hosted its fourth annual quiz night at a bar in central London.
Thirty-five teams, featuring more than 250 people, took part in the climate and energy-themed evening, all hoping to win the coveted trophy claimed last year (again) by “BEIS Science”, a team of scientists working at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

The teams competing this year, as in previous years, were made up of a wide range of people who, in one way or other, work on climate change or energy. The list included journalists, civil servants, climate campaigners, policy advisers, energy experts and scientists.

Organisations represented included: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); Committee on Climate Change; Sandbag; Carbon Trust; RenewableUK; Friends of the Earth; European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; WWF-UK; ClientEarth; Department for Transport; and five teams from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Teams from the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen, the Priestley International Centre for Climate in Leeds and Verisk Maplecroft also took part online.
After more than two hours of competitive quizzing, this year’s winners were announced…ETC

6 Nov: SunshineCoastDaily: Fireys rush to solar panel blaze
by Ashley Carter
FIREFIGHTERS have rushed to a Buderim home this morning where a rooftop solar panel is reportedly on fire…
(A Queensland Fire and Emergency Services spokeswoman) said all occupants were accounted for.
The fire was under control just before 8.40am and firefighters were monitoring the situation until an electrician arrived.https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/fireys-rush-to-solar-panel-blaze/3568538/

VIDEO: 1min46sec: 30 Oct: 9News: SA homeowners warned about risky solar panel installations
By Jessica Stanley
The state government’s safety watchdog has taken the rare step of issuing the alert, after a random audit of work carried out by a local operator revealed problems with cables in the roof space.
The solar panel installations were carried out by David Dare of Synergy Solar and Electrical, and the Technical Regulator has said it could be potentially dangerous and may pose a risk to customers.

They’ve potentially got a risk of fire in their house or even electrocution should the worst happen,” Robert Faunt told 9News today.
“We’ve found a lot of non-compliant work which has really concerned us,” he said.
The business has carried out work across both metropolitan and regional areas and is known to have performed installations on behalf of other solar energy companies.
It’s not known how many homes could be affected…
“Potentially there could be hundreds of them,” Mr Faunt said.

Just my imagination, but I like to think the first story goes like this…
- Electrician in Buderim said they’d be there sometime between 9 and 12
- Arrived at 2pm, looked at the job, said they’d have to order some parts that will take a week to arrive.
- Firefighters to continue monitoring the situation.

6 Nov: Wind turbines acting as ‘apex predators’ by driving down bird numbers, study finds
Experts say new structures must not be built in wildlife hotspots
by Josh Gabbatiss
Wind turbines can act as top predators in ecosystems by driving down populations of birds and triggering knock-on effects across food chains, according to a new study.
Scientists found that predatory raptor birds were four times rarer in parts of an Indian mountain range covered in wind turbines, ***suggesting they were avoiding the structures.

The same areas saw an explosion in numbers the raptors’ prey, fan-throated lizards, which also became more confident and less scared of humans due to the lack of predation.
“We have basically added a new apex predator – a wind turbine,” Dr Maria Thaker from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru told The Independent.
“What that predator does is remove the level below it – not kill it, but the outcome is the same.”…

Scientists have become increasingly aware of the impact these massive structures can have on wildlife, with studies showing birds and bats can be killed or scared away by their spinning blades…
“The bottom line for me is that I will pick wind energy over fossil fuels any day,” said Dr Thaker.
“We just have to be smart about where we put them, so can we minimise our impact on the ecosystem by picking areas that are not unique in ways that we cannot replace.”…
Dr Thaker’s findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution (LINK)…

“Wind farms, while they have a crucial role in mitigating the effects of climate change, must be built in the right places so they don’t harm bird populations,” said Dr Aly McCluskie, a conservation scientist at the RSPB.
“In places such as the North Sea, we are beginning to see an unprecedented industrialisation of the marine environment.
“The cumulative effects of ever more poorly sited wind farms are likely to have dire consequences for our seabirds, adding to the pressures from a changing climate.”https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/wind-power-turbines-birds-predators-renewable-energy-lizards-rspb-a8619236.html

6 Nov: UK Times: ‘Predator’ wind farms upset the food chain
by Tom Whipple
They perch on the highest vantage points in the countryside with powerful arms and are reproducing at an alarming rate. They are the latest top predator in our ecosystem: the wind turbine.
Scientists have found that introducing wind farms can have unsettling effects on the local habitat, comparable to those that happen when you introduce big carnivores. The study, in Western Ghats, India, showed that by scaring away bird life, the turbines caused a “trophic cascade” through
the food chain that made lizards change colour. They suggested similar effects would also probably be found around British wind farms.
Maria Thaker, of the Indian Institute of Science, said she conducted the research because of the effect of wind turbines on raptors. “Whether through collisions or because…

6 Nov: Daily Mail: Wind farms are the ‘new apex predators’: Blades kill off 75% of buzzards, hawks and kites that live nearby, study shows
•Predatory bird numbers are four times higher in areas away from win turbines
•This is having a devastating ‘ripple effect’ across the food chain
•It means numbers of certain small animals are growing unchecked
By Harry Pettit
Birds and bats were assumed to be most vulnerable to the rise of the landscape-blotting machines.
But their impact is reverberating across species, experts warned, upsetting nature’s delicate balance.
The news is particularly worrying as most wind farms are built on wide open plains and other environments where birds are typically found…https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6354843/Wind-farms-new-apex-predators-kill-three-QUARTERS-predatory-birds.html

6 Nov: Popular Science: Scientists want to put ‘speed bumps’ in hurricane alley to slow down storms
by Marlene Cimons
Science – Wind farms could absorb some of the energy from hurricanes before they hit land.
The advantages of wind power are well-known. Wind is clean, plentiful, and renewable. Installing turbines in large numbers could help wean our carbon-intensive civilization from its addiction to fossil fuels. New research suggests that one day there could be another major benefit: massive installations of wind turbines could lessen the deluge when powerful hurricanes bring devastating amounts of rain onto land. During such recent storms as Harvey and Florence , which brought historic levels of rainfall , this could have meant less flooding and destruction, and fewer deaths.

“Offshore wind farms definitely could be a potential tool to weaken hurricanes and reduce their damage,” says Cristina Archer, a professor in the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, who conducted a recent study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (LINK) describing the impact of offshore turbines on hurricane rainfall. “And they pay for themselves, ultimately, which is why I am excited about this.”…READ ONhttps://www.popsci.com.au/science/scientists-want-to-put-speed-bumps-in-hurricane-alley-to-slow-down-storms,515151

Did they even calculate it! The energy in hurricanes is more than a few H bombs.
Absurd rubbish, should never get published in any reputable publication.
journal Environmental Research Letters – is going from bad to worse.

6 Nov: BBC: How the humble lamp-post could help power our cities
By Tim Bowler
As more than two-thirds of us will be living in cities by 2050, scientists and tech firms are looking at new ways to harness renewable energy within the built environment. But at what cost?

One day, your office windows will be harvesting energy from the sun, while the lamp-post down in the street is storing energy in its concrete.
Vertical wind turbines will spin as traffic whooshes past, and pavements and roads will generate small amounts of energy from all those commuter feet and heavy buses and lorries pounding down them.
Fleets of driverless taxis will give back surplus energy to the grid, and cities generally will make much more efficient use of the energy they consume.

5 Nov: Courier UK: Letter: Time is right for turbine ban
Sir, – There has long been anecdotal evidence of wind turbines having serious adverse effects on human health; now thanks to a team led by Professor Christian Friedrich Vahl at the medical university of Mainz in Germany, we have an explanation for this.
Professor Vahl’s team have discovered that low frequency noise or infra-sound, which we cannot hear, can weaken human heart muscle by up to 20% and can also alter blood flow.
In an interview, he described the effect of infra-sound as being like a jammer for the heart.
Given that the theoretical limit for wind turbine efficiency is 41%, the majority of the energy extracted by the turbines from the wind is dissipated as infra-sound.

Worryingly, one of the characteristics of infra-sound is that it is very penetrating.
Normal walls will make essentially no difference to it.
The professor points out that to protect from infra-sound you would need a very high eight metre thick wall.
Such a wall would have to be thicker than most houses and considerably taller.
When we add the serious threat to human health to the other problems of wind turbines (expensive part-time electricity, turbine flicker, damage to the environment and, when construction is taken into account, not reducing CO2), it is clear that the time has come for a moratorium on new turbines.
Otto Inglis. 6 Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh.https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/readers-letters/758362/lord-hain-case-raises-pertinent-questions/

1 Nov: Breitbart: James Delingpole: Wind Turbines Can Harm Heart, Says German Professor
Wind turbines are terrible for the health of the millions of birds and bats they slice and dice every year – and they’re not much good for humans either: they can even stop your heart working properly.
This was the conclusion of an experiment conducted recently by a medical team in Mainz, Germany, led by Professor Christian-Friedrich Vahl.

This has been known cor twenty years but has been kept hidden by governments/workplaces and insurance companies to reduce liability for damage to drivers of heavy machinery like trains and heavy mining equipment. The deceit has been seen in the reporting of “noise” levels which made it appear that action was being taken.

The skin and intervals, lung surface receive the impulse and it interferes with the normal brain function that is connected to the heart lung system.

5 Nov: Accuweather: Snow to spread as arctic air plunges into central US this week
by Kristina Pydynowski, Courtney Spamer
In the wake of the severe weather early in the week, the door will open for waves of arctic air to start blasting into the central U.S.
Blustery winds will usher the cold air first over northern parts of the Rockies and Plains on Election Day. Voters will have to bundle up as AccuWeather RealFeel Temperatures will be held to the single digits and teens across most of the Dakotas.
Snow creating slick spots on roads and sidewalks will make Tuesday feel even more wintery across North Dakota.
The colder air will sweep to the south and east across more of the nation’s midsection at midweek with yet another arctic blast to follow late in the week.

Temperatures on Thursday may be held 10 to 25 degrees below normal in many communities across the Plains and Great Lakes…

This snow looks to spread from Wyoming and northern Colorado on Wednesday evening through parts of Nebraska and Kansas through Thursday…
The average first snowfall for northern and western Kansas is typically in mid- to late-November.
Farther south, temperatures will be marginally cold enough for snow, allowing for a mix of rain and snow in places like the Oklahoma Panhandle and Wichita, Kansas.
Airports in Denver, Wichita and Kansas City could all expereince delays due to the adverse weather…
Following this system, more opportunities for snow are expected to unfold across the north-central United States next weekend or early the following weekhttps://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/arctic-air-aiming-at-central-us-this-week-may-set-stage-for-snow/70006537

3 Nov: Daily Mail: Ski season starts a MONTH early in the Alps thanks to heavy snowstorms – as skiers hit the slopes in Spain and Portugal after blistering hot summer
•Three metres of snow has fallen in the southern Swiss and northern Italian Alps
•Verbier in Switzerland was yesterday able to open some of its slopes
•Portugal’s only ski area, Serra da Estrela opened some slopes on Thursday
By Leigh Mcmanus
Verbier in Switzerland was yesterday able to open some of its slopes in what is believed to be the earliest start to the season…
Even resorts in Portugal and Spain are opening way ahead of schedule.
Portugal’s only ski area, Serra da Estrela opened some slopes on Thursday while Massella in the Spanish Pyrenees also enjoyed its earliest opening.
Other resorts in the Alps are opening, too. Glacier resorts like Tignes in France and Hintertux in Austria have high-altitude slopes open…
Sulden in Italy along with Glacier 3000 in Switzerland said they will open slopes in the coming days.

30 Oct: The Local France: VIDEOS: Heavy snow causes travel chaos and power cuts in central France
Some 200,000 homes were still without power across France on Tuesday after heavy snow fell across central regions on Monday evening, leaving hundreds stranded in their cars. Parts of the country are still on alert with the early wintry weather set to continue.
Winter arrived early in parts of France on Monday and it took many by surprise, not the least the 950 motorists who were left stranded on roads in the Haute-Loire and Loire departments of central France when heavy snow fell on Monday evening.

On Tuesday morning there were still some 195,000 homes in France without electricity due to powers cuts…
Some 17 departments in central and north eastern France remained on alert for snow on Tuesday morning (see map below). The wintry weather is due to head from the Massif Central towards the Champagne and Ardennes departments throughout Tuesday morning…

The heavy snowfall mainly affected the departments of Haute-Loire, Lozere, Loire, Puy-de-Dome, Cantal, Aveyron, Correze and the Creuse. But there were also wintry showers in Burgundy and the Rhone-Alpes.
In parts of the Haute-Loire there were reports of 50 cm of snow falling in local areas.
It was here where many motorists were caught out and had to spend the night in their vehicles after roads became blocked. The Route Nationale 88 was particularly badly hit.
Several hundred were also evacuated from their cars and spent the night in emergency accommodation…

29 Oct: El Pais Spain: One missing after weekend of rain, snow and cold temperatures in Spain
Around 53,000 properties left without electricity in Menorca and Asturias, with 1,300 students forced to stay home and problems on the roads due to snow drifts
One person was still missing on Monday morning after a weekend of rain, snow and low temperatures across Spain, due to the arrival of a mass of polar air on Friday over the Iberian peninsula…

26 Oct: El Pais: Weekend of wintry weather in Spain, with sharp drop in temperatures
by Victoria Torres Benayas
The change will be so drastic that in many places Friday’s lows will become the Sunday highs. AEMET says it will be an episode of “almost winter-like” weather, with temperatures plummeting by up to 19 degrees Celsius in cities like Soria, in the northern region of Castilla y León. The services warned that the winter-like weather will be compounded by “very cold and gusty” winds from the northeast. While not very strong, they will intensify the sensation of cold…
The temperature is expected to fall by 19ºC in Soria, 15ºC in Burgos, 14ºC in León, 13ºC in Pamplona, Zamora, Madrid, Córdoba and Lugo, 10ºC in Oviedo and Bilbao, and nine degrees in Valencia…

The first general frost of the season has also been forecast for the weekend. AEMET says its “reach will be notable” for October, extending to large parts of the country including the areas surrounding Cuenca, Guadalajara and Teruel. Between Sunday and Monday, many regional capitals will wake up to sub-zero temperatures, including Soria where the minimum forecast is -2ºC and León and Burgos, where the minimum will be -1ºC…

DO NOT FORGET TO VOTE. It’s not only your right but it’s your responsibility to make an informed vote. Otherwise self government of the people by the people and for the people does not work.

There is no unimportant election. Since I could vote — at age 21 in those days — I have missed only elections while I was in Saigon and one other when I became too ill to get to the polling place and it was too late to get an absent voter ballot.

The polls are already open on the east coast and will soon open on the west coast.